Savannah Georgia

Like people, every city has its personality. What is Savanana then? Closing my eyes, I see trees, big trees, covered with dark grey Spanish mosses, slaves and plantations, squares with statues, and mansions with different colors and shapes. Savannah feels like classical English literature, and I wonder if Scarlett in Gone with the Wind and Forest Gump would walk out of an alley any minute and run into me. This is a city which has roots in history, and everything here seems to come from a history book or movie. Walking around Savannah brings me the feeling of old days I spent in Virginia.

The snow and ice were just melting when I left midwest for Savannah. Arriving in here, my face was melt and my body was no longer stiff. This city feels like summer, shadows of trees, sunshines and many bright-colored flowers vibrantly blooming. People wear shorts, t-shirts and tank-tops.

In such a setting, you feel life is poetical here. No matter it is sitting around the corners for dinner, crossing the road with elegance or enjoying a random afternoon with friends. Everywhere you can see is a framed picture of poem.

What are some of the fun things to do in Savannah? You can jog along the Savannah river for short miles and watch a big big container ship moving in. At the mouth of the Savannah river, there is the Atlantic ocean. Along the river, you can glance shops and restaurants and there is a cable car “ding ding” besides you. When we ran by, there was a street performer who played loud some marching band music to cheer us up. If you want to run longer miles, there is also Forsyth Park a bit further away like the central park in NYC, where there are waterfalls, statues, meadows and gardens.

The downtown area has a big walking district, and has boutique shopping, food and art galleries. One of our favorites is called The Paris Market. It has fine Chocolate, Cafe and crafts from France. The cashier is an European-looking, talk and skinny boy, with cute curly hairs. He told us “this weekend will be the St. Patricks day. The Savannah river will be dyed to green. Many people will come to the city. People can freely drink on streets here.” He had this lively smile and I wish our checkouts could be a little longer 🙂

Walking district has many art galleries. I am very excited to get to know an artist who lives in West Virginia. His paintings are cute and whimsy. I love to discover random artists like this in small galleries. In these shops, downstairs are galleries, and upstairs are art studios which has big windows and you can walk in to talk to artists. I visited an artist and she is making a living by doing illustrations for people on social media like drawing a pet for them. In her spare time, she did her own collage art. She was talking to me about how she visualized things and put down as a painting over days. I love such sincere and genuine personality.

Savanna is artistic because there is SCAD–Savannah College of Art and Design– a famous design school where students from all over the world come. There buildings are cute 🙂 and their museum is a cool stop.

Trolley tour is a big thing here. It takes you to all the beautiful squares and historical buidings in the downtown area. The driver will tell you a bit history of each beautiful building and street. Often I can’t remember any of those after the tour, but with the beautiful sunset lighting and tipsy wines on trolley as well as the warm winds coming from the trolly windows, it made a pleasant and relaxed evening.

Food is surprisingly good here, especially sea food. We randomly walked into a restaurant near the river, called Charter house. Wow, this ordinary looking fish is the best cooked fish I ever eat. We have four people comfortably sat at the corner. The conversations went freely with no directions and purposes. We started with “that’s an interesting last name” and ended up to learn that our friend’s great grand father is a US president. Every one said it was a pleasant night :).

Next day, along a street, we went into a coffeeshop called Clyde, it is spacious and contemporary with reasonable prices. One friend said she likes to make coffee from beans all over the worlds, and the other friend said she loves weird drinks. They both found their drinks happily here.

For sweets, I tried the famous Leopold’s’ ice cream and Byrd’s famous cookie. They are both very very old stores. Leopold’s ice cream store always has super long lines. Byrd’s famous cookie gave you a jar or a box and asked you to fill with assorted cookies of seasonal flavors like key limes, George peach, maple, almond, wafers …